


A Close Shave

by PlaidAdder



Series: Missing Pages [14]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Facial Shaving, Fear of blades, Fluff and Angst, Fluff without Plot, Food, M/M, Past Starvation, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 07:33:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14744591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: I made the mistake of reviewing my most recent entry before beginning this one; and now, I am daunted. Compared to our remarkable adventures on board the Gilded Lily, our thrilling combat with the crew of that ancient smuggler's sloop, the astonishing discovery of Holmes inside that--coffin--and our mad scramble off the ship to escape detection, the events that seemed, when I awoke this morning, so momentous that they should be graven on stone tablets and displayed in the British Museum, paled to insignificance. If Holmes were awake, he would perhaps reassure me by reminding me that even trivial details are often of immense importance in the unraveling of even the most sensational mysteries. Holmes is, however, asleep in the quaint old four-poster bed in this sloping-roofed upper-story room.*****Alone in an empty house in Cornwall, Watson tends to a convalescing Holmes, who desperately needs a bath and a shave.This is either fluffy angst or angsty fluff. You be the judge.





	A Close Shave

July ---, 1891

I have slipped out of bed today at dawn to record the memorable events of the last forty-eight hours. I made the mistake of reviewing my most recent entry before beginning this one; and now, I am daunted. Compared to our remarkable adventures on board the  _Gilded Lily,_ our thrilling combat with the crew of that ancient smuggler's sloop, the astonishing discovery of Holmes inside that--coffin--and our mad scramble off the ship to escape detection, the events that seemed, when I awoke this morning, so momentous that they should be graven on stone tablets and displayed in the British Museum, paled to insignificance.  _That_ was an adventure which might one day, if the conditions are ever right, find its place among my chronicles.  _This_ day has been, perhaps, an even greater adventure; but it would be of no interest whatever to  _Blackwood_ or  _The Strand._  

If Holmes were awake, he would perhaps reassure me by reminding me that even trivial details are often of immense importance in the unraveling of even the most sensational mysteries. Holmes is, however, asleep in the quaint old four-poster bed in this sloping-roofed upper-story room. Frank and Hatty, in reporting the results of their reconnoitering, referred to it as a "Cape Cod." I could make nothing of this until Holmes informed me that the 'Cape Cod' style of architecture was adapted by New England Puritans from the half-masonry, half-timber constructions so beloved by the Tudors. This villa is in fact an eighteenth-century Tudor revival. From the outside, I may say, its appearance is not prepossessing; but perhaps that is why it remains unlet. The owner, Miss Hunter has assured us, is at this moment in Central Africa. The larder has been very fully stocked; the Moultons made a great show, as soon as the  _Gilded Lily_ docked in Kynance Cove, of shopping in Tredannick Wollas, taking care to have everything delivered to the quay and loaded onto the _Gilded Lily._ We may, therefore, safely shelter here for a while and plot our return to London.  

Holmes is, as I say, asleep in this dark and curiously carved four-poster bed. It would be more accurate to say that he is asleep  _on_ it. Most of the bedclothes are in a heap by the southeast post, and he lies sprawled upon his stomach with his limbs stretched out to the four corners. When the sun fully rises, the morning light will come through this dusty little lead-paned window and spangle him all over. In this indefinable light before, one notices line more than shape. One surveys with anticipation the subtle contours of his shoulders, the incline of his back, the twin rising curves of his...

 _What_ is the matter with the English language? Why are all the English words for this essential part of the human anatomy so utterly and abjectly unworthy of its glory? This is a question I have never considered until today, for I have navigated my entire literary life without having to deploy a common English word for the _nates,_ the _gluteus--_ in brief, the buttocks. But the lack of a suitably majestic term for them has now become a serious crisis. While I search for a solution, let me instead describe his face, which is fortunately turned toward me, and now wears an expression of blissful and complete repose. The cheekbones are a bit less sharp, the aquiline nose less pinched. I can hardly refrain from returning to him right now, and burying my nose in his scented hair, and tracing with the hand that now holds this pen the smooth, soft skin of his clean-shaven jaw.

I will strive to compress.

As soon as we were within sight of land, I had to bundle Holmes below decks. We could not risk his being spotted from the shore; nor would my presence, if I were identified, be easily explicable. With some difficulty I coaxed him into the stateroom--he did not like entering a comparatively small space; I do not need Holmes's powers of deduction to understand why--and did what I could for him within its confines. It was impossible to attend to _all_ of his needs. Fresh water is always at a premium on board ship, and thus Holmes could not have the bath he desperately wanted. This was a source of great torment to him. I got him out of the tatty old drawers that had been his only covering since his capture; but though I had brought with me plenty of fresh linen and some of his own clothes, he refused to put any of them on. Instead, he allowed me after much persuasion to sponge-bathe his face, neck, and extremities, and curled up on the settee, swathed in his blanket. 

Though I myself was far more concerned about the effects of prolonged inanition, his shame about this enforced uncleanliness touched--I will not say broke--my heart. From our earliest days at Baker Street I had noticed that although Holmes would neglect himself almost entirely when he was hot upon a case, his  _toilette_ was the one exception. No matter how little sleep he had, no matter how little to eat, no matter how much of that seven percent solution had got into him, anyone who entered the sitting room during regular client hours found him bathed, shaved, pomaded, and dressed. I had often admired the speed with which he could transform himself from a mound of touseled hair and rumpled linen copiously flecked with cigarette ash into an effortlessly dapper, if slightly bohemian, gentleman. 

Nothing was more alarming to him, however, than the brief fits of insensibility that, for several hours, continued to recur. This is not at all uncommon in patients emerging from deep anaesthesia, and it is always temporary; but knowing that did not help Holmes at all. He would drop off quite casually, sometimes in the middle of a sentence; but he started awake in panic, thrashing like a drowning swimmer. My touch would calm him down, but not before I had seen pure terror in his eyes.

"I thought I would die shut up in there," he said to me, after one of these fits, while gripping my hand and trying to slow down his breathing. 

"Another few hours, and I believe you would have," I said, suppressing a shudder.

Doctors are trained to greet seriously ill patients with reassuring platitudes and undimmed cheerfulness. But it was reassuring to Holmes to hear that the danger had in fact been as great as it felt to him. These spells, fortunately, gradually became less infrequent, and Holmes's body seemed to be tolerating the condensed milk well. As it happened, the Moultons had recently encountered a couple who were nut-arians, and as a result had come out to sea with a quantity of nut-cutlets that they then found too unappetizing to consume. Holmes didn't like them either; but the salt and the potassium did him good. By sundown, Holmes had sufficiently revived to dispute with me about absolutely everything I was doing for him. I have never debated him with more zest.

Holmes spent most of the weary wait for full darkness asleep, lying down on the settee with his head in my lap. During most of our vigils together, he was always the one to stand watch, with every nerve quivering in anticipation. There was nothing to guard him from now--nothing, at least, present or visible. I stroked his hair, wishing that I could somehow wash him in his sleep, so that he would wake up fresh and clean and feeling as if his weeks of captivity were nothing but a nightmare.

At last, at around midnight, the others judged that it was time to start smuggling. They had obtained several wheelbarrows from the sheds round the quay, and Holmes--still wearing only that blanket, with which he had become one--and I made the journey up to the house in one of them, with a tarpaulin thrown over us. Holmes insisted on doing the actual breaking and entering. I was pleased to see him handling the tools as dextrously as ever with those long, nervous, but no longer trembling fingers; and no doubt, so was he.  It would of course be risky to light the lamps--a bright glow in the windows could be seen for miles, and the place was supposed to be empty--so all of the bustling back and forth that the Moultons, Mary, and Miss Hunter did as they unloaded my luggage and their shopping had to be done by the light of dark-lanterns, something I believe all four of them greatly enjoyed. Holmes, for his part, dropped unceremoniously into the largest, softest armchair in the dark sitting room, and fell back to sleep while I reconnoitered. The cottage, alas, has been only partially modernized. Bathing still has to be done in a large copper tub which sits in a corner of the spacious kitchen. I heated the water while the others bustled about, moving all the provisions into the pantry. When all was sorted to their satisfaction, they came out to the sitting room to take their leave of us.

It was a bittersweet parting for me. Mary and Miss Hunter are going on from London to Walsall, and none of us know when we shall see each other again. I was wistful, even, at my farewell to the Moultons. Their stubborn, uncomplaining good humor and cheerfulness has sustained me through many an evil hour. For Holmes, however, their departure was a blessed relief. I believe he even slept better knowing that they were gone. 

When I had filled the bath with warm water--which was no easy task--I roused him, gently. He came awake slowly, without that awful thrashing. I leaned over the arm of the chair, looked into his eyes, and said, "Your bath's ready."

A long, thin arm shot out from beneath the blanked to seize upon mine. He pulled himself out of the armchair. The blanket fell away as he stood up. Leaning on my shoulder, more I believe for moral than for physical support, he walked with me into the kitchen. The smell of neglect traveled with him. He noted this, with a wry face, and turned to me as I let go of him.

"It isn't very romantic, this," he said.

"That depends on your definition," I replied, setting the dark lantern on the stove. It cast its narrow beam on the bath, like the moon in miniature shining on a toy ocean.

He shook his head, ruefully. Then, with a deep breath, he lifted his head and reached for my hand to steady himself as he climbed into the tub. He settled into the warm water, with a long sigh of satisfaction.

"I haven't told you," he murmured, as his eyelids drooped. "I haven't told you what happened at Buda-Pesth."

"I know you were mixed up with a murderess," I said. "It was in  _The Voice of Hungary._ That's how Mycroft knew you were alive."

Holmes was falling asleep again, sliding down the back of the tub. I reached out to prop him up; but as I did so, his chin dipped below the water level. He came awake flailing, and splashing water and soap everywhere.

I took one of his hands, as it sailed through the air, and held onto it. He stopped flailing.

"Holmes, I'm here," I said. "I'm always here, whether you're sleeping or not. You can relax. I won't let you go under."

He gripped my hand tighter. He compressed his lips, and he nodded.

"Thank you, Watson."

"Will you wash yourself or shall I do it?" I said, holding up a bath-sponge with my other hand.

"If you would," he said, before his eyelids dropped again.

I stripped off my waistcoat, rolled up my shirtsleeves, submerged the sponge, soaped it, and went to work. And...

Let me try to do this with a metaphor. An old-fashioned Illustration.

Imagine that you, a man of leisure with a taste for beauty, have a habit of paying a daily visit to a museum which houses your favorite piece of classical statuary. Michelangelo's David, let's say, or the Dying Gaul. Every day, you stand behind the velvet-rope barrier and you feast your eyes upon the classic proportions, the melodic lines, the incredible naturalism in the curls of the hair, the straining of the muscles and sinews. You devour it with your eyes; you memorize its details, you amuse yourself in determining where to stand in order to see the well-loved figure to its best advantage. In time, you come to have such a complete image of this statue in your mind that you don't actually look at it any more. You still visit the museum; you interest yourself in other works of art; but mainly because those works of art are near that beloved figure, whose contours are so deeply etched on your heart that your vision is now redundant. By no amount of looking, you tell yourself, can you know that beauty any more intimately than you already do.

Then, imagine that one day, you wake up and the statue is standing next to your bed. A note attached says that because you loved this piece so much, the museum has made you a gift of it. It is yours now. And with bated breath, you approach the well-remembered figure. For the first time in your life, you lay your hand upon it. Nobody is there to see or to tell you not to. And you realize at once that you were mistaken. Until you touched it, you never knew its beauty at all.

And now imagine that wherever you touch it, the statue comes to life.

You can look at a man and know the keen, birdlike profile and the aquiline nose and the long, nervous fingers and the sinewy arm--you can know the length of his stride, the breadth of his shoulders, the tapering of his waist, the narrowness of his hips. You can look at a man in darkness and in light, in despair and in hope, in langour and in elation. You can look at a man in his dressing gown, in his pinstripe trousers, in his black silk mask, in his false nose and whiskers. You can capture, by looking at him, the twinkle of merriment in his eye or the gesture of impatience with which he waves away an irrelevancy. All this you can do by looking at a man. But to lay your hands upon him--to wipe away, from the lathe-turned shoulder and the sweeping clavicle, the hooped ribs and the taut abdomen, and all of the other parts for which I am still searching for adequate names, the misery and despair sedimented in the grime defacing them--is to ascend to a higher knowledge.

For some time, under my ministrations, he merely laid back with his eyes closed, emitting now and then a soft moan. When he opened his eyes, the pupils were wide and dark. As, medically speaking, they should be, in that low light.

Under the water, he took my hand, and began to guide it.

Everything seemed to happen very slowly. In the semi-darkness, while the water stayed warm, it was almost as if we were swimming together--two marine creatures twining ponderously in the deep. It wasn't until after the critical moment that I realized that my shirt was drenched. I removed it and dropped it on the stone floor, where it made a rather comical _splat._  

Holmes's eyes sprang open. He sat up. He looked at me with more energy than I would have thought, at that moment, he was capable of mustering. Indeed, I believe that he would have pulled me right into the tub if it had been big enough for two. As it was not, and as the water was fast going from lukewarm to cold, he allowed me to help him stand up. I filled a clay pitcher with water at the pump and rinsed him with it. 

The well from which this water was drawn was evidently much colder than I had imagined. Holmes flinched, drawing his arms up and folding them over his chest. "Watson!" he shouted. "What the devil!"

"Sorry, Holmes," I said. "There isn't any hot water left, and--"

"Never mind!" he sang out. He shook his head, vigorously, spattering water droplets all over the kitchen. He took in a kind of whooping breath, then let out out with a shout. I could see gooseflesh prickling on his arms. But there was a light in his eyes that I hadn't seen since those last moments together on the path. He slapped his hands together, rubbing them palm to palm. "It _was_ a bit of a shock; but bracing, Watson, very bracing. Let's have another!"

"Are you sure?" I said. He looked so much more like himself now--white as a leek, and still too thin, but clean and tall and muscular--and it  _was_ July, but every doctor trained in these islands is trained to be wary of chills.

" _Now_ , Watson!" 

"Very well."

I filled the pitcher again and upended it over his head. He shivered, gasped, and then let out an even louder shout of exultation.

"Excellent!" Holmes exclaimed, running his fingers through his drenched hair, and scratching his scalp all over. "Once again!"

The cold, I realized, was acting as a stimulus, counteracting the relaxing effects of whatever traces of chloroform lingered in his system. I intend to write in to _The Lancet_ about this. At that moment, I merely filled another pitcher with water and dumped it over him.

He received it, trembling, and shook himself all over. His whole skin prickled in the cold. It gave him rather a wild appearance about the head and neck, where his stubble stood out like the hair of a caterpillar. 

"Again!" he shouted.

I went back to the pump. This time, I flung the water straight at his midriff.

He let out a high-pitched squeak, followed immediately by a shout of outrage. He leapt--unexpectedly nimbly--out of the tub, seized the pitcher from me, and raced to the pump.

"Oh no," I said, trotting after him. "Holmes, _no._  No, no no--"

I had just time to observe that his reflexes seemed to be in good order before a pitcherful of frigid water struck me in the chest. 

" _God_ that's cold!" I shouted, involuntarily.

"But bracing!" he replied, returning to the pump handle.

I wrestled him--not too roughly--away from it. The pitcher dropped to the floor, where it broke. Laughing at my efforts, Holmes slipped easily from my grasp, and ran from the kitchen. He pelted up the stairs to the upper storey, leaving puddles as he went. I nearly broke my neck slipping on one of them; but I clutched the banister, rallied, and finally burst into the bedroom. Holmes was there ahead of me. He had flung himself onto the quilt on the bed and was rolling on it like a horse in the grass, drying himself off.

I stopped, for a moment, where I was. I felt my heart had become dangerously enlarged. I had often seen him bound from one extreme to another; and I knew well that he had an iron constitution and tremendous physical resilience. But to see him, not even a full day after his removal from that box, after hours of condensed milk and nut cutlets and panic, come back into his body like that--to feel his energy crackling in the air, humming at his finger-ends and in every hair on his white body--it was a miracle, and it was almost too much.

He practically vaulted up into a sitting position. He saw my expression. His face softened for a moment. Then that light returned. 

"Come here, my dear fellow," he said. "It will be all right. I have never felt better. I promise not to overexert myself."

"Holmes, as your doctor, I must protest. Your heart--"

"I am in perfect agreement, Watson. I know very well that I have not yet regained prime condition. That race up the stairs, if you will believe it, actually winded me. But," he said, raising a forefinger. "I promise not to overexert  _myself._ I do _not_ promise not to overexert  _you_."

My medical training protested; but my medical training, alas, lies in my head and not in my trousers. Holmes gave a little cry of exultation, and renewed his appeal.

"Come to me now, there's a good fellow," he said, briskly. "Out of your clothes and come."

He spoke in that masterful way he always adopted whenever he wished me to agree to commit burglary or compound a felony. I have never taken more pleasure in yielding to him. 

Yielding to him was, indeed, a long, exquisite, and unspeakable pleasure. Mary once cherished a certain admiration for some of my physical features, but she never approached my  _membrum virile_ with anything like eagerness. Holmes went to it as if it were the solution to all the mysteries. And indeed, it solved at least one of them. That visitation in Baskerville Hall had not been a dream at all. It had been a prophecy.

I can't write down all we said afterward. I can't remember all of it. This doesn't trouble me at all. These are not things you say once and then never again. At least, they will not be that for us. I will just say that when he curled up against me, his head upon my breast, his arms wrapped round my torso and his legs wrapped round my hips, sleep came to him gently, softly, and without terror. I held him in my arms, and I thanked God and every one of the mortal instruments of the providence that brought us back together. We had shared many a room and many a bed together; but always lying side by side, wrapped in our nightclothes, talking sometimes but never touching, desiring and not having. That was over with. And thank God for it.

When I awoke the next morning, I was alone in the bed.

I sat up and swung myself out of it, muttering an oath. But then I heard something from below. I listened. Down in the kitchen, someone was moving about. And it had damn well better be Holmes.

I pulled one of the traveling cases from beneath the bed, selected my chestnut-colored dressing gown, slipped it on, and stole downstairs. I peered into the kitchen.

Holmes was seated at the rough wooden table, in nothing at all, polishing off a boiled egg and toast.

"Well," I said. "Your appetite seems to be improving."

He looked up at me with a rapturous smile.

"It is!" he agreed, with his mouth full. He washed the remnants down with the end of a tin of condensed milk.

"Would you like another?" I said.

"Thank you Watson; but no. This is my sixth."

"Sixth?" I demanded. I looked around the kitchen, and saw the evidence. "Holmes--"

"Oh come now, Watson," Holmes said. "I've often gone without food for two or three days without all of this fuss. I feel like a giant refreshed." He slapped his stomach with both hands. "Eggs cannot bring down this mighty machine. But see! I was not unmindful of your own appetite." 

He gestured at the teapot, and a china plate from which he removed a large earthenware bowl that was serving as a cloche. I was relieved to see that it contained only  _two_ fried eggs, and a few links of sausage. I sat down and fell to. I too found I had a very keen appetite. This was as well, for the eggs were overdone and the bread under-toasted; but I ate it all without complaint, while he beamed at me. He rested one elbow on the table and leaned his head in his hand. A puzzled expression appeared on his face. He lifted his head, then stroked the stubble on his chin with one hand. 

By the time I had finished, he was scratching round the stubble on his chin and neck with  _both_ hands, and becoming more and more annoyed with it.

"Enough!" he finally said, clapping his hands down on the table. "I can't stand it another moment. Watson, did you happen to--"

"I packed for all eventualities," I said. "There is an entire trunk full of your things--including clothes, if indeed you ever intend to wear them again. Come with me."

He led the way up the stairs. I followed him; and I enjoyed the view. I called him into the other bedroom, where they had deposited most of my luggage. I opened the steamer trunk--not without a bit of a frisson, and a fleeting vision of those brass padlocks on that wooden locker--and presented it to him.

He saw, resting on top of the other clothes, a smaller hinged wooden case bound with well-handled leather straps. He lifted it out first. He knew, of course, that it was mine and not his. He opened it. I, who had somehow not asked myself when I put it in this trunk what Holmes might deduce from it, felt myself blushing.

He took in an astonished breath.

I watched his hands move from one object to the next. The glass and its handle. The syringe, quickly moved out of sight. The violin, stroked, made sure of, put aside. The gloves, lifted and turned, subjected in every inch to that keen gaze and those sensitive fingertips. The black silk mask.

This, he smoothed out, peered at, and then took over to the window. He opened the curtains, laid it on the sill, and looked at it, closely, in the light.

"Watson," he said. "Come here and look at this."

Reluctantly, I went over to the window.

"I myself," he said, "haven't touched this since the night we burgled Milverton. In fact, I had always intended to destroy it as evidence. And yet...it has been handled since then. The strings have been unknotted and re-knotted; see, here, the discolorations made by the fingers and their natural oils. There are numerous signs that the silk has been under stress, especially this V here, where it would cross the bridge of the nose. It has, since  _I_ last touched it, been repeatedly worn by someone with a broader nose and a squarer jaw than my own."

I could not have borne this if I had detected the slightest hint of jocularity or irony. But he was handling the silk with such delicacy, and his voice was soft, gentle, and a bit bewildered--as if, despite all the deductions he had made, there was still a mystery here that had not been solved. 

"And look here, under the eye-holes," he said. "You see these white streaks. Silk is easily damaged by water; and this whitish residue is left behind by the evaporation of a salty fluid. Like seawater, or sweat...or tears."

He laid the mask down on the sill and looked up at me, sadly, with infinite tenderness.

"Sometimes--at night--" I began. "While you were--away--"

In an instant, he was holding me on the bed, my knees straddling his lap, my arms round his back, as I hid my face against his shoulder and cried. 

"Hush," he was murmuring, into my ear. "I know, Watson. I know. Oh my dear Watson. My dear, dear darling man."

A few minutes later, when all of that melancholy had passed out of me, I extricated myself and made another dive into the trunk. I produced his shaving kit. He seized it eagerly, and darted out across the hallway to our bedroom. I followed him in and sat on the bed. From the bathroom, I heard the splash of water in the basin, the friction of the brush going round and round the bowl. I imagined the rising lather, heard him daubing it on himself, humming a little in anticipation.

Then, suddenly, silence.

Then, the clang of metal against the rim of the basin.

Something muttered, softly at first, then louder. Another clang. 

Silence.

And then, a curious catching of the breath. A snuffling. Not tears, but the prelude.

I slipped off the bed and stole up behind him.

Holmes stood at the basin, both hands propped on the wooden table into which it was set. He was staring at himself in the mirror. His neck and chin were fully lathered. His straight razor and strop lay near his right hand. 

Holmes reached for the razor. His hand shook. He lifted it. His hand shook more. He dropped it back onto the table. He closed his eyes, and swore under his breath.

"Holmes?" I said.

" _Damn_ it!" he hissed, to his reflection.

"Holmes, what is it?"

My reflection appeared in the mirror, next to his. Standing behind him, I can just about rest my chin on his shoulder. He looked at me in the mirror, raised a hand, then put it down.

"You said you would tell me everything, Holmes."

He closed his eyes and sighed.

"I still haven't told you about what happened in Buda-Pesth."

I put my arms round his waist. We stood there, looking at each other in the mirror, and he told me the story. It was not very much like the report in the  _Voice of Hungary._

"What a strange and awful narrative," I said, at last. "And...since then...?"

"Well since then I've been either wearing false beards or going to the barber's," he said. "But even at the barber's, it wasn't like this. I don't understand it. Why--it's over now, Moriarty is _over_ now, and I can't--I can't hold a razor. Sophia Kratides, after all that happened to her, gutted both of them without a moment's hesitation and I can't even shave myself. God help me if I ever try to pick up a scalpel again. _Why?_ Why is this happening to me? What am I going to _do_?"

For a few moments, I held onto him while he cried. His shaving lather rubbed off in my hair. In the glass before us, we both looked sadly forlorn, a little pathetic, a little ridiculous.

"Holmes," I said, when he had quieted down. "It is not just your brain that is unusual. Your whole organism is highly, almost unbearably sensitive. You pick up vibrations no one else can feel. You receive deeper impressions than another man would. You can distinguish the ash of a Trichinopoly cigar from that of a bird's-eye, you know the difference between the smell of the loam in Tavistock and the clay in Brighton. For the same reason that music ravishes your entire soul and that you can be entirely overwhelmed by the touch of my hand...I mean to say, Holmes, you were  _stabbed._ You were cut into, viciously, by a very sharp blade, many times. Seeing it done again to someone else in Buda-Pesth would have compounded the shock. And then--the box--must make everything so much worse."

I held him a little tighter. He nodded, wretchedly.

"And," I said, "we have discovered, have we not, that you are also unusually, almost miraculously, resilient. I don't know how long this will last. I dare say it will not be forever. In the meantime...do you think I could shave you? Can you trust me to do it?"

Tears came to his eyes, and made little tracks in the lather over his cheekbones. He put his hands over mine, where they were clasped at his waist, and pressed them.

"I will trust you with anything, Watson," he said.

"Wait here," I mumured.

I returned to the other bedroom, took out the smaller case, emptied it, closed it, and then brought it back to the bathroom. Standing on it, I was just tall enough to stand behind him, with our heads on a level, and to reach round him and take a gentle grip on his jaw, the way I would my own. I tilted his head slightly to the right, and slowly brought the razor into view. The sight of it startled him. He closed his eyes.

"Do it," he said, through gritted teeth.

You can look at a man's face every day for years. You can look at it until you can see it when you close your eyes. Every line and furrow, every angle, every crevice and every fall. And you can know it well enough that when you see it in a mirror, your hands know what to do. You can know it well enough to smooth out the folds in the neck, to go with the grain round the angle of the jaw, to pull taut the skin of the upper lip, where you never shave yourself, and scrape it clear without leaving a nick. You can be there, behind him, pressing gently up against him, just enough to make him feel as if he has his back to the wall, as if he is defended. With the hands that every day shave your own face, you can gently pare away the growth of those last hideous weeks, reap the harvest of pain and despair and rinse it all down the drain. You can be glad to see it go, knowing you'll still have to cut it all away again at the same time the next morning. You can rinse off the lather at last, you can pat his face dry as you do your own when you're not in the mountains of Afghanistan or on the deck of a ship and you have the luxury of a soft warm towel. You can tell him, at last, it's done, I've put it away, you can open your eyes. But you can't imagine the look you see in them when he does. You can't imagine the look in your own.

The whole day following will have to go unrecorded. The sun is about to rise. This journal is for my eyes only. And I would not have him, after all that has happened, awaken to an empty bed. Part of me would like to wait, to see the sunlight glow into elongated diamonds along the curve of his back. But I have had enough, for this morning, of looking.

JHW

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been planning this one for a long time; it's nice to finally get to the point where I can write it. It is a little unfortunate that YouTube now things I'm a hipster with a hot towel shave fetish, but hopefully that will pass. 
> 
> I don't do well with sex scenes--I've tried; the response is usually polite silence--so I needed something to stand in for it, and the bath and the shaving are a pretty good combination: the intimacy, the trust, and the way you trust the other person to handle something that could be so very dangerous in the wrong hands. 
> 
> The house they're in belongs to Dr. Leon Sterndale.


End file.
